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https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/GetMultimedia.ashx?db=Catalog&type=default&fname=17651.jpg
I remember that i was walking up the A41 in wolverhampton (unsuccesfully) trying to hitchhike home, and someone came out of a house at the side of the road and called out "They have landed on the Moon."
Later on In ealing at the time of the Apollo 13 (almost) disaster, I remember the cartoon in the link above.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/its-45-years-apollo-13-5534989
How lucky or not have we been with the advances in engineering provoked by the lunar missions. Non stick saucepans anyone?
Edited by oldroverboy. on 19/07/2019 at 20:24
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I remember that cartoon (or one similar). Daily Mirror wasn't it?
I do have some sympathy with SWMBO, who complains about the extensive coverage of an event that happened fifty years ago. It ain't news! As she asked a few days ago, "how long did it take them to reach the moon and do we have to put up with it for as long?"
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It's the beggars who deny that it happened that annoy me, only secondary to the cretins who spray paint motorway signs proclaiming "earth is flat".
t'internet has a lot to answer for........
Great to see James Burke again though on the telly!
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Great to see James Burke again though on the telly!
Dunno.
He.d been the BBC's Mr Moon Shot for the whole program, and when 13 forced an abrupt departure from the script I thought he was surprisingly clueless.
Quite a lot of howlers, IIRC
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Quite a lot of howlers, IIRC
It's what happens when an arts graduate is used to present programmes about technical matters.
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If only we’d carried on today we’d have access to the almost unlimited resources of our solar system. But no, small minded people (voters) would rather we scrape by pouring never-ending sums into welfare creating an expanding sub culture that are draining our resources. That and weapons research and production which if turned to space exploration could see a new golden age. The amount of money poured into the weapons industry in one year could open the door to space.
Today we struggle to balance limited budgets and worry about declining resources while above our heads there are asteroids that hold unbelievable wealth. A whole galaxy of possibilities.
Recently a report I read stated that a return to the moon and a base to allow low gravity launches and further exploration would cost less than that gargantuan white elephant HS2 or one US aircraft carrier battle group - the US have 11! Why do they need such a number? There’s no rival anywhere near such capacity. Both are an utter waste compared to the next big step the human race could take.
Sadly too much democracy and short term thinking will doom the lot of us. No one seems to see the big picture at all. As Stephen Hawking said “I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,”
“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all of its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we can spread the load.”
“I am convinced that humans need to leave the Earth.”
The capability is there but sadly the will is not and that will undoubtedly doom the entire race at some point, be it in ten years or a thousand.
Edited by SLO76 on 20/07/2019 at 00:30
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The capability is there but sadly the will is not and that will undoubtedly doom the entire race at some point, be it in ten years or a thousand.
The will is there, the capability is not there yet, they want to go to Mars but biggest problem(amongst other things) is radiation which in time they will overcome, tech is getting there and will make a difference.
imo it will happen sooner rather than later as there is a lot more to learn yet and looking forward to seeing what they are capable of...
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Space exploration is phenominally expensive and very very dangerous. To mine an asteroid would cost a fortune and not be economically viable. And thus far most has been government financed. Government projects tend to be very inefficient.
SpaceX is showing that industry led developments can deliver better products significantly more cheaply. They are financed by satellite launches, and government projects such as resupplying the space station. They are far less bureaucratic and more agile. They started out with funding from Musk, and private investors. What he has done is take technology developed with government funding, and reduce production costs, as well as innovate. Shoving huge amounts of government money into projects would not have created SpaceX.
And 50 years on technology has progressed so far that some things we can now do better for less money. Navigation is an obvious example.
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The last moon landing with people on board was 47 years ago. That no-one since has tried to return reflects how little benefit there was, aside from a cold war point scoring perspective.
I do find the technical side of it interesting but maybe we would have even better non-stick pans by now had we not squandered all that money to get into space. We may even by now have had a functioning HS2 - an even greater white elephant than moon landings.
Perhaps technology has advanced sufficiently now to actually take advantage of zero gravity or mineral deposits on other worlds. But what money would you put on the human race not screwing up other environments in their search for money making opportunities.
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The reason why it’s so hugely costly and currently not economically viable to access such assets is because we have no low gravity launch capability. Everything has to lift off from Earth with takes enormous power and fuel which all must be carried with it. To launch from the moon or a large orbital station would use a fraction of the power and cost.
If we came together and stopped allowing our leaders to pour resources away buying power then we could assemble ships (mostly unmanned) on the moon or in orbit which could then be sufficiently shielded to allow manned journeys but it’s a challenge to build something light enough to launch from the Earth with the capability of going to another planet or further. We’ve been waiting on some miracle super tech to appear but while new technologies are announced regularly without a low gravity and lower cost launch option much goes untried.
NASA has a tiny budget compared to the US military as a whole yet space is the future of our race not war. If they had half the money the US blow on maintaining a more powerful military than the rest of the world combined they could achieve great things once again. Again who are they so afraid of that they need 11 major carrier groups?
Encouraging the private sector is definitely the way to go. They’ve made rapid strides in recent years and new technologies are being worked on to allow us to bypass Earths gravity. A space elevator for example is planned but would be hugely costly though it would vastly reduce launch costs and open things up for the private sector, It’ll require huge international investment and unity to achieve which is sadly not going to happen anytime soon.
I’m amazed by anyone thinking that the moon landings and the exploration of space are a waste. If we don’t get access to vastly greater resources than we currently have then we will have to vastly curtail both our way of life and our population, neither of which would be tolerated by the public.
We need to start now with an eye on future generations or they’ll see stagnation and decline and I’m glad that there’s a renewed interest mostly generated by the much publicised successes of the private sector. They’ve an eye on the astonishing mineral wealth contained in the asteroids above our heads and it’s well within our capacity to send unmanned vessels to harvest them or pull them closer to Earth to make it easier.
It’s time the human race lifted itself out of the cradle. Our potential is bewildering but sadly being held back by our short-term thinking and political system that rewards power to those who offer the greatest amount of cash giveaways.
Edited by SLO76 on 21/07/2019 at 00:03
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The reason why it’s so hugely costly and currently not economically viable to access such assets is because we have no low gravity launch capability. Everything has to lift off from Earth with takes enormous power and fuel which all must be carried with it. To launch from the moon or a large orbital station would use a fraction of the power and cost.
To establish a base on the moon would be phenomenally expensive, especially getting all of that hardware up there. There is no source of fuel on the moon. We cannot make items on the moon. To develop technologies to mine and refine metals would be a very difficult task. Bear in mind that doing anything on the moon costs hundreds if not millions of times more than on earth.
If we came together and stopped allowing our leaders to pour resources away buying power then we could assemble ships (mostly unmanned) on the moon or in orbit which could then be sufficiently shielded to allow manned journeys but it’s a challenge to build something light enough to launch from the Earth with the capability of going to another planet or further. We’ve been waiting on some miracle super tech to appear but while new technologies are announced regularly without a low gravity and lower cost launch option much goes untried.
Nice idealism, but you won’t see it happening because there are nasty people in this world. Take Russia. It is led by a small corrupt group who manipulate the media, and destroy anyone who opposes them. And China. They now have a cult of personality around their leader, who no longer has a fixed term. They have imprisoned a million or more Muslims in concentration camps. Ethnic Chinese spies live uninvited in Muslim homes. They are building islands to claim territory from Vietnam and others. And they claim Taiwan as their own. How do you deal with such regimes?
NASA has a tiny budget compared to the US military as a whole yet space is the future of our race not war. If they had half the money the US blow on maintaining a more powerful military than the rest of the world combined they could achieve great things once again. Again who are they so afraid of that they need 11 major carrier groups?
Encouraging the private sector is definitely the way to go. They’ve made rapid strides in recent years and new technologies are being worked on to allow us to bypass Earths gravity. A space elevator for example is planned but would be hugely costly though it would vastly reduce launch costs and open things up for the private sector, It’ll require huge international investment and unity to achieve which is sadly not going to happen anytime soon.
I’m amazed by anyone thinking that the moon landings and the exploration of space are a waste. If we don’t get access to vastly greater resources than we currently have then we will have to vastly curtail both our way of life and our population, neither of which would be tolerated by the public.
We need to start now with an eye on future generations or they’ll see stagnation and decline and I’m glad that there’s a renewed interest mostly generated by the much publicised successes of the private sector. They’ve an eye on the astonishing mineral wealth contained in the asteroids above our heads and it’s well within our capacity to send unmanned vessels to harvest them or pull them closer to Earth to make it easier.
It’s time the human race lifted itself out of the cradle. Our potential is bewildering but sadly being held back by our short-term thinking and political system that rewards power to those who offer the greatest amount of cash giveaways.
I think the moon programme achieved very little, although it was a stunning achievement. We would be better spending money on solving problems here on Earth. My personal view is that the current moon programme is worth pursuing, but a Mars mission is idiocy. But it’s only my opinion.
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Space is not remotely about the survival of the human race as we know it. It would be a struggle to put sufficient of us in space to create a viable gene pool.
There are 8bn people on earth at the moment. If just 1 in a million were "launched" there would be 8,000 souls inhabiting non-earth environments - for the UK as a whole we couuld send about 70.
8000 people all in one place is scarcely the size of a small town. Were they a cuddly or notable animal they would almost certainly be classified as an endangered species. It also represents an increase over those who have ever walked on the moon (12) and those who have flown in space (~500)
We would be massively better off spending the huge sums needed finding a sustainable way for homo sapiens to live sustainably and indefinitely on earth.
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Space is not remotely about the survival of the human race as we know it. It would be a struggle to put sufficient of us in space to create a viable gene pool.
Well, it is, but not everyone in the world can be taken to another planet, we have to find one first which will take years, a colony on Mars or the Moon maybe, plenty of people think its a joke spending on space, but if we had carried on from the Moon landings we still may not be in a position to do what some have mentioned
even spending vast amounts on keeping us going may not be enough to keep vast populations going, and if global warming is not our fault we still have to survive whatever the Earth has to throw at us, so its going to be interesting to see what happens over the next ? years
time is marching on!
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Finding another planet and making it habitable (sort of) for us humans will still leave 99.99999% here on earth awaiting our fate.
James Lovelock, the original proposer of the Gaia theory (only one earth, don't mess it up) later also put forward the proposition that the optimum number of humans was 0.5-1.0bn.
There are currently 7-8bn - so assume the right population would be around 750m. This could be a very low carbon recycling world with limited stresses placed on the natural environment and resources.
There are but ta few options:
- allow conflict, famine, climate change, disease etc to wipe out 80-90%of humanity
- accept high population levels in an increasingly regulated and controlled environment - small pods not houses, food processed and manufactured to deliver preset levels of nutrition, no freedom to travel, etc
- rapid reduction in population growth rates - limit of 1 per female with the necessary skills and attributes. Reproduction would be a privilege not a right.
Peronally the last option seems the best - for my grandchildren the thought of them spending their later years in grossly unpleasant and difficult enviroonment horrifies me!
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Very shortly the human race as a whole will have to face the fact that the earth can only support a finite number of mouths to feed. This leads on to the unpalatable fact for some that global warming/climate change/ C02 is not the armageddon it is being scaremongered that it is. - lack of basic food and clean water will be the crunch time.
We are at 8 billion now - the limit is 10 billion by many estimates.
Very unfashionable that it might be, but it's time to stop the undeveloped nations breeding like rabbits and filling the world up with mouths gaping to be fed.
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Shame that some of the Nazi German scientists that participated in getting man to the moon were not executed as they should have been after the end of WW2!
Edited by Zippy123 on 21/07/2019 at 23:20
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Very unfashionable that it might be, but it's time to stop the undeveloped nations breeding like rabbits and filling the world up with mouths gaping to be fed.
If your life expectancy is short and / or infant mortality is high, then there is a biological imperative to have more children.
The situation will improve when the health and longevity of those in such places improves.
Perhaps the world needs to be a fairer place?
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Space is not remotely about the survival of the human race as we know it. It would be a struggle to put sufficient of us in space to create a viable gene pool.
There are 8bn people on earth at the moment. If just 1 in a million were "launched" there would be 8,000 souls inhabiting non-earth environments - for the UK as a whole we couuld send about 70.
8000 people all in one place is scarcely the size of a small town. Were they a cuddly or notable animal they would almost certainly be classified as an endangered species. It also represents an increase over those who have ever walked on the moon (12) and those who have flown in space (~500)
We would be massively better off spending the huge sums needed finding a sustainable way for homo sapiens to live sustainably and indefinitely on earth.
We have to start somewhere and a moon base would be the first step in opening the door. The first people to make big money from space will flood up there and mining colonies will appear. Yes it’ll take hundreds of years to put a big enough population off-world to guarantee our survival as a species but again you must begin the process or we will eventually plateau and decline. We cannot sustain our way of life and the current population growth. It’s time to pull our heads out of our tailpipes and start the work that must be done.
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“To establish a base on the moon would be phenomenally expensive, especially getting all of that hardware up there. There is no source of fuel on the moon. We cannot make items on the moon. To develop technologies to mine and refine metals would be a very difficult task. Bear in mind that doing anything on the moon costs hundreds if not millions of times more than on earth.”
You amass it on the moon and can launch much heavier vehicles from there than we can from Earth. The technology to mine to moon via robot or remote controlled machinery is perfectly viable and already in use. We can fly drones over Afghanistan from airbases in the UK and US. To control a drone digger from a moon base wouldn’t present any huge issue. There’s plenty of raw materials there plus the low gravity capacity would open up asteroid mining which offers unlimited potential.
There’s fuel on the moon anyway and plenty of it. We just have to get the initial resources off planet and onto the moon or into orbit to allow further options. It’ll cost billions but if we diverted a fraction of the money wasted on weaponry, foreign aid and the bone-idle we’d save the future for the rest of the human race who will see massive cuts to their standard of life if we don’t either find more resources and room to move or hugely curtail our out of control population growth.
www.shackletonenergy.com/goingbacktothemoon
theconversation.com/mining-the-moon-for-rocket-fue...3
www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/billionaire-closer-to-mini...l
www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/physics/helium-3-l.../
Edited by SLO76 on 22/07/2019 at 00:02
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“Nice idealism, but you won’t see it happening because there are nasty people in this world. Take Russia. It is led by a small corrupt group who manipulate the media, and destroy anyone who opposes them. And China. They now have a cult of personality around their leader, who no longer has a fixed term. They have imprisoned a million or more Muslims in concentration camps. Ethnic Chinese spies live uninvited in Muslim homes. They are building islands to claim territory from Vietnam and others. And they claim Taiwan as their own. How do you deal with such regimes?“
You can’t, simple. Despite NATO’s overwhelmingly superior firepower we have little ability to control Russia or China. All we require is an effective nuclear deterrent and an offensive capable military. The UK has this despite spending a far lower percentage of our GDP on the armed forces. The US are going totally overkill and it’s all to pay back political donations from the weapons industry. They could half their defence budget and still have by far the most capable military on the planet. It’s utter nonsense and has c******d the US public finances.
They could be beginning to terraform Mars had they diverted half their defence budget into NASA after the Soviet block collapsed and their sole real rival died. Russia is a pale shadow and utterly incapable both militarily and economically of fighting a major war.
China has embraced global capitalism and has no desire to kill the golden goose that has brought such prosperity. They’ve invested throughout the globe and despite the fact that they are rapidly modernising their military to a western standard they show little desire for conflict and instability beyond the occasional sabre rattle over Taiwan.
They will however dominate the future as without the need to bribe the electorate every few years and with no donation system of party finance they can think longterm. I’m not saying the one party state is the way forward but we need to make political parties state funded at least in part and remove any large donations beyond say £5,000.
This would remove or at least curtail the kickbacks currently enjoyed by wealthy individuals, industry and trade unions. We need to be able to plan longterm instead of this constant cycle of one party gets in and changes everything, pours the nations wealth away then the other comes in, sorts it then gets chucked out (usually by their own doing) and the other mob get back in and spin the spending taps to full again.
We’re getting nowhere, in fact the whole western world is declining thanks to our corrupt and inept political systems.
Edited by SLO76 on 22/07/2019 at 00:40
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“I think the moon programme achieved very little, although it was a stunning achievement. We would be better spending money on solving problems here on Earth. My personal view is that the current moon programme is worth pursuing, but a Mars mission is idiocy. But it’s only my opinion.”
The moon landings were an astounding achievement when the technology available at the time is considered. I’ve more computing power in my phone than NASA used to send man to the moon. But while the cost was high and the direct gains low this was because they never carried on as they began. They spend the big bucks to get the ball rolling then backed off.
They did have a serious threat from the USSR at the time but the US never won the Cold War through military force, it did so through forcing the soviets into crippling themselves economically by trying to keep up with western advancements. They spent huge wealth on their own space race and military which only helped to ruin them economically.
When the soviets collapsed the US should’ve diverted their focus to space, they could be utterly dominant economically had they continued what they began. Instead they have crippling debt, a massive deficit and a military budget they simply cannot afford all because of the donations system of political finance in place there and sadly here.
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